Safe Internet Browsing Flashcards

When you visit a website, it stores a small text file on your computer to remember your preferences, login status, and items in your shopping cart. What is this file called, and what is a primary security risk associated with it?

Answer: Cookie; it can be hijacked to impersonate you and gain unauthorized access to your accounts.

This file is a cookie. While cookies are essential for a personalized web experience, they can pose a security risk. If a session cookie is stolen (hijacked), an attacker can use it to impersonate a legitimate user and gain unauthorized access to their accounts and personal information without needing a password.

A user wants to research a sensitive topic on a shared family computer without saving the browsing history, search queries, or cookies on the device itself. Which browser feature should they use, and what is a key limitation of this feature?

Answer: Private Browsing (or Incognito Mode); it does not hide your IP address from your ISP or the websites you visit.

Private Browsing (or Incognito Mode) creates a temporary session that does not save browsing history, cookies, or form data on the local device. However, it is not truly anonymous. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP), school, or employer can still see your online activity, and the websites you visit can still identify your IP address.

Which of the following is the MOST critical visual indicator that a website encrypts the data transmitted between your browser and the server, protecting it from eavesdroppers?

Answer: The presence of 'https://' and a padlock icon in the browser's address bar.

The 'https://' in the URL and the corresponding padlock icon are the standard indicators that a website is using HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure). This protocol encrypts the data in transit, making it unreadable to anyone who might intercept it, which is crucial for protecting sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers.

A user is considering installing a new browser extension that offers to organize their tabs. During installation, it requests permission to 'Read and change all your data on the websites you visit.' Why should this be a cause for concern?

Answer: This permission level is excessive and could be abused to steal login credentials, monitor activity, or inject malicious scripts.

Requesting excessive permissions is a major security red flag for browser extensions. An extension with the ability to read and change all data on websites can potentially capture sensitive information like passwords and financial details, track all browsing activity, or inject malicious code into legitimate websites without the user's knowledge.

You receive an email with a link to what appears to be your bank's website. Which of the following is the BEST technique to verify the link's legitimacy before clicking?

Answer: Checking if the email contains the bank's official logo.

Phishing attacks often use hyperlinks where the displayed text looks legitimate, but the underlying URL points to a malicious site. By hovering the mouse over the link without clicking, you can preview the actual destination URL in the bottom corner of the browser window. This allows you to check for misspellings or entirely different domains before navigating to a potentially dangerous site.

A user clears their browser's cache. What is the primary function of this action?

Answer: To delete stored website files like images and scripts from the computer, which can resolve display issues and free up space.

The browser cache is a temporary storage area on your computer for website files (like images, HTML, and CSS) that have been downloaded. Its purpose is to make websites load faster on subsequent visits. Clearing the cache removes these temporary files, which can help troubleshoot website loading or formatting problems and reclaim disk space.